


Three's A Crowd

by KrpytoniteKitten



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Lots of Angst, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:00:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrpytoniteKitten/pseuds/KrpytoniteKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How TSoT might have ended...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three's A Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for the high level of angst in this fic...

Sherlock always knew that John’s wedding was going to be bittersweet agony for him. Ever since he had returned and discovered that the good doctor intended to marry this woman, this Mary, Sherlock had been consumed by a feeling that he had tried to choke and suppress, with no success. With (he told himself) purely scientific and academic pursuit and intent, he researched his symptoms, and time again found his condition mirrored in every love song, rom-com, chick-lit novel and poem. He ate them all up and cursed himself. After years of being so careful, after shutting feelings out, he had fallen. He’d fallen for John.

 

He agreed to be best man, mostly out of surprise of being wanted by John. After his return he never thought that John would let him back into his life. Positions reversed, Sherlock wouldn’t have let himself back in. But John (brilliant, wonderful, caring, amazing John) had. He still couldn’t understand why Sherlock had faked his own death, and Sherlock had avoided the question, knowing that if questioned he would say too much. Especially now that John was promised to another. 

 

He watched the pure look of joy on the face of his best friend as John slipped the wedding ring onto the fourth finger of Mary’s left hand. It was mirrored on Mary’s face. The joy in the church was infectious. Everyone smiled, except Mrs Hudson, who was crying but they were her ‘happy tears’. They were clearly tears of joy. Even Sherlock smiled, outwardly, though inwardly he wept. It wasn’t even as though he didn’t like Mary – he did. It was just that she was marrying John. His John, the best man he’d ever known. The best person he’d ever known. And Sherlock had lost him. He was married. To Mary. Not to Sherlock. Everything had changed. Nothing could or would ever be the same again.  
Mycroft had warned him, Mrs Hudson had warned him… Molly had even warned him in her own way. Everything would be different now. He had thought that he could adapt to it, but that was before he saw how happy John was without him.

 

Up until the Fall, he’d not known, he had not realised just how much John meant to him. He knew that John was his favourite person. He knew that John was caring, brave and strong. He knew John cared about him, enough to kill to protect him. He had surprised himself in caring quite so much when Moriarty had strapped explosives to John’s chest. He even registered, that on a base physical level, he found the doctor attractive, though he attributed this to pheromones and spending a lot of time together. He knew that when John was there, he used less chemicals to alter his brain. He didn’t need to be numb, because John had a presence in Sherlock’s life that was analgesic in nature. He didn’t cut when John was there. John made him smile and laugh and John stroked his ego by writing his ridiculous blog. Sherlock cursed himself for not making an appropriate deduction based on these facts. He should have deduced that what he was feeling was love.

 

Of course, now it was too late. Sherlock could see that John was happy with Mary. Any idiot could. He realised for the first time that John’s happiness came way before his own. He was prepared to die for this man. So he attended the wedding, made his speech, solved two attempted murders, played his composition… and left.  
As he looked around the room, he saw it filled with happy, smiling, dancing people. People who were normal. Everyone seemed to have someone else to talk to, to prop up the bar with, to dance with. Molly was jiving with Tom, even Lestrade had found a willing dance partner. Sherlock had never been so aware of his separation from the rest of population. Perhaps he had never cared before. He’d been an avid subscriber of Mycroft’s ‘caring is not an advantage’ philosophy. He had actively shut it out, pushed people away, even John, who had only ever tried to help. Sherlock had barely even noticed. 

 

He thought about the old days, the days before Moriarty, before John… If he didn’t keep busy, if he got bored… that didn’t bear thinking about. The cases, the running around London, chastising the ordinary people for their inferior people, it was all a big distraction. If he stopped still too long, Sherlock often found he had far too long to think, and worst of all, to feel. He used drugs, of any kind, to close off his mind and, for a few blissful hours, to forget. To actively not think. Except the use of the drugs became more and more frequent and his body became more and more tolerant to them. Until one day when Mycroft’s people found him, unconscious and overdosed on the floor of a public toilet in St James’ Park. He swooped in, as usual, to save the day, when, in truth, at that point Sherlock hadn’t really wanted saving from himself. Mycroft, with all the might of the British Government behind him forced him into rehab where he was made to piss in a sample jar to prove he was clean. Mycroft surmised that the real problem for Sherlock was boredom and used a little influence in Scotland Yard to arrange for his baby brother to accompany one of their detectives on homicide cases. It kept him busy, and that was when he met John. That was when the pain, the numbness and the boredom disappeared. 

 

Then Moriarty came along, and Sherlock had to disappear. The two years he had spent away from John, taking down Moriarty’s networks, Sherlock did his fair share of feeling. He had truly discovered the meaning of the word lonely during these times. The majority of his days were spent planning and organising and infiltrating… but the nights were something else entirely. Sherlock shuddered. The nights, they had been the worst. The endless nights and the endless cold and the endless isolation. The urge to contact John was always worst at these times, just to have heard his voice would have been enough, but no one could know he was alive until he had taken out the last of Moriarty’s underlings. Until the threat to Mrs Hudson, to Lestrade, to John was non-existent. Until they were safe. Nothing mattered more to Sherlock. 

 

Sherlock forced himself not to think of those times. They were over, Moriarty was gone and Sherlock was home. At least, the closest thing he had to one. 221B was his house, but without John within its walls, it wasn’t home. John lived with Mary now. Sherlock had calculated that the chances of John returning to him at 221B were very low. Especially with the baby on the way. 

 

Sherlock saw John and Mary glace over at him and forced himself to smile. He spoke to Mary and John, leaving them to dance together. It was time to leave. He whirled round a corner, grabbed his coat from a wooden peg in the cloakroom, and pulled it on over his suit, turning up the collar as he slipped out the side door, unnoticed by John and Mary. He stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and in one swift movement, turned it off. He did not wanted to be contactable for the rest of the night. 

 

Sherlock walked and walked into the night, until his walk broke into a run and he was far away from the wedding. Physically. Mentally, he was still very much there, though he was trying his best to shut it out. It wasn’t until he stopped running that he realised that the moisture on his face had very little to do with physical exertion. He was back at 221B. He went straight to his bedroom, and found the little box of syringes he kept under the frankly vile socks Mycroft had bought him for Christmas one year, reunited the box with the small bag of brown powder he kept in his pillowcase, and with all the precision of an analytical chemist, set about getting his fix. 

 

Tonight the emotion and the feelings had become too much, and, if he was honest, there was nothing he wanted to do more than end it all. He held the syringe up to the light, and, not for the first time, contemplated using his entire stash to never feel again. To never do anything again. He thought back to earlier in the day, and his vow. He had vowed to protect John (well, to protect all three of them – John and Mary and the baby). What was one more broken promise to John? After all Sherlock had caused him enough hurt when he had disappeared. What if, Sherlock reasoned, the best way to protect John was by removing himself from the equation entirely? Without Sherlock in the picture, John would no longer be a target from criminals like Moriarty, or from Sherlock himself, who seemed to hurt John without even understanding how he was doing it. What his real suicide was the only way to protect John? John didn’t need Sherlock anymore. John was saved. Sherlock was broken and superfluous, redundant and, in all probability, a nuisance to John. John was a married man, he wouldn’t need a highly functioning sociopath with mental health problems and multiple addictions to look after as well a wife and child and his patients. 

 

Really, his suicide would be for the best... it was only logic.

 

Sherlock turned his phone back on. It was time to send one final text.

 

_I love you. Always will. I’m sorry. - SH_

 

As Sherlock injected the lethal dose, for one moment, he felt entirely at peace. John was the last thing he saw in his Mind Palace before he died.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, this is my first Sherlock fanfic (and in fact my first fanfic since I was about 13..) Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
